It is common for businesses and homeowners to have a security system for detecting alarm conditions at their premises and reporting these to a monitoring station. One of the primary functions of the monitoring station is to notify a human operator when one or more alarm conditions have been sensed by detectors installed at a monitored premise.
Detectors may vary from relatively simple hard-wired detectors, such as door or window contacts to more sophisticated battery operated ones, such as motion and glass break detectors. The detectors may all report to an alarm control module at the premises. The control module is typically installed in a safe location and is connected to a power supply. The control module is further in communication with the individual detectors to communicate with or receive signals from the detectors. The communication between the alarm control module and the detectors can be one or two way, and may be wired or wireless.
Current day consumers, however, expect in-premises equipment to have sophisticated graphical user interface and provide non-critical functions. As such, there is a desire to have an alarm system function provide such a feature-rich graphical user interface to allow for the control of the alarm system. Additionally, it is desirable to allow the alarm system to provide further functionality such as multi-media playback, video monitoring and the like. Existing dedicated alarm systems are highly robust having been thoroughly tested. They provide alarm monitoring capabilities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for many years at a time. Introducing the increased functionality risks the availability of the core alarm system functions.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved alarm systems that may be feature-rich, but may also provide the robust monitoring expected of such systems.